Apple iPhone 4S: Thoroughly Reviewed
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Brian Klug on October 31, 2011 7:45 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Apple
- Mobile
- iPhone
- iPhone 4S
Display
Though many expected Apple to redesign everything around a 4“ display, the display on the 4S superficially identical. The 4S includes the same size and resolution display as the 4, namely a 3.54” IPS panel with 960x640 resolution. We’ve been over this a few times already in the context of the iPhone 4 and the CDMA iPhone 4, but it bears going over again.
In retrospect, moving up to 4“ would’ve gone against Apple’s logical approach to maintaining a DPI-agnostic iOS, and it makes sense to spread the cost of changing display resolution across two generations, which is what we see now. While Android is gradually catching up in the DPI department, OEMs on that side of the fence are engaged in a seemingly endless battle over display size. You have to get into Apple’s head and understand that from their point of view, 3.5” has always been the perfect size - there’s a reason it hasn’t changed at all.
I’ve been through a few 4s myself, and alongside the CDMA iPhone 4, have seen the white point of the retina display gradually shift over time. While I don’t have that original device anymore, even now the 4S seems to have shifted slightly compared to a very recently manufactured 4 I had on hand, and appears to have a different color temperature. We’ve been measuring brightness and white point on smartphone displays at a variety of different brightness settings, and the 4S isn’t spared the treatment. I also tossed in my 4 for comparison purposes. The data really speaks for itself.
The first chart shows white point at a number of brightness values set in settings. You can see the iPhone 4 and 4S differ and straddle opposite sides of 6500K. I would bet that Apple has some +/- tolerance value for these displays from 6500K, and the result is what you see here. Thankfully the lines are pretty straight (so it doesn’t change as you vary brightness), but this variance is why you see people noting that one display looks warmer or cooler than the other. I noted this behavior with the CDMA iPhone 4, and suspect that many people still carrying around launch GSM/UMTS iPhone 4 devices will perceive the difference more than those who have had their devices swapped.
The next two charts show display brightness at various settings for solid black and white on the display.
The 4S and 4 displays follow roughly the same curve, however there is a definite shift in contrast resulting from higher black levels on the 4S display. I’ve seen a few anecdotal accounts of the 4S display being less contrasty, and again this is the kind of shift that unfortunately happens over time with displays. I’ve updated our iPhone 4 result on the graph with the latest of a few I’ve been through.
Unfortunately the 4S falls short of the quoted 800:1 contrast ratio, whereas the 4 previously well exceeded it (the earliest 4 we saw had a contrast value of 951). Rumor has it that Apple has approved more panel vendors to make the retina display, I have no doubt that we’re seeing these changes in performance as a result of multiple sourcing.
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dacramer - Tuesday, November 1, 2011 - link
The browser benchmarks show the 4s as fastest, but this benchmark is FLAWED as a measurement of CPU performance.The benchmark compares Safari to the Android stock browser. The stock Android browser does not support 2 cores, only 1. So all Android dual cores phones would be nearly twice as fast with another browser such as Opera.
I'm surprised Anand did not include this discussion in the review. He seams fixated on the idea that stock to stock browser is a valuable comparison when it totally misleads readers on CPU performance.
Lucian Armasu - Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - link
In case you missed it, the Droid RAZR scored 10% faster than iPhone 4S in the SunSpider test.But yes, this is still mostly a software issue, and I expect the Android 4.0 browser to be even faster on the same chip.
thunng8 - Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - link
FYI, Google says the Galaxy Nexus scores 1983ms in Sunspider running ICSdoobydoo - Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - link
"Where did it show faster CPU?"Where did it in my comment?
Breit - Thursday, November 3, 2011 - link
I just run SunSpider 0.9.1 on my Galaxy S2, international model (everything stock, with Android 2.3.5) and it came in at 1626.5ms with Opera Mobile browser and 3354.8ms with the stock Android browser. So saying the CPU on the Galaxy S2 is weaker than the CPU on the 4S is just not right (and that by a big margin!).At least make comparisons with the best software there is and not just 'some' browser you eventually found on your phone...
I'll bet there is someone programming his own browser just for the kicks or as an exercise for his programming skills and that browser scores over 9000ms in SunSpider. Does that mean the CPU in that phone is slow? ;)
doobydoo - Friday, December 2, 2011 - link
You could achieve the same results on the iPhone too..The comparison is (rightly) comparing stock browser to stock browser, and the iPhone 4S is faster. It would be even faster again using say, Opera.
As for some guy posting 9000ms - you can filter the results to 'best' times so this is a non issue.
Tetracycloide - Tuesday, November 1, 2011 - link
Isn't there more to displays than just white level in nits, black level in nits (on a chart were I can't seem to find the Galaxy S II or the Infuse), and contrast (again, don't see the Samsung Galaxy S II or the Infuse on the contrast chart either)? Don't get me wrong, I don't agree in the slightest with the summary "this is apple cheerleading" but honestly the display comparisons are pretty lacking IMO. Where are the rest of them? There's more to a screen than just nits.medi01 - Thursday, November 3, 2011 - link
Last time iphone disappeared from comparison photo, from the one where it would pale in comparison, when asked, author "explained' that he simply "forgot" it in the pocket. (!!!). Now they didn't even bother. Round of but kissing on "retina" hype and phones disappearing from charts.Find contrast of Galaxy phones on the charts pretty please...
steven75 - Friday, November 11, 2011 - link
Could you be any more of an Fandroid? Seriously.Stuka87 - Tuesday, November 1, 2011 - link
Wait what?Almost every single page has a comparison to Android phones. Several of them have graphs showing the differences!
And your comment on the displays may be your opinion, but actual measurements show otherwise. but hey, if you like your over saturated display with a much lower pixel density, thats your decision.